1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for application testing of an embedded system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for application testing for cross-developing an application program installed in an embedded system regardless of a type of a target system and applying a developed environment to a corresponding target system.
2. Description of the Related Art
An embedded system is designed to perform a predetermined response or process with respect to user or external input unlike a general computer system. Further, the embedded system cannot directly develop a used application program and should use an application program developed in another computer system.
Since most of the embedded systems low-cost small systems unlike the general computer system, a memory adopted in the embedded system is small in size, slow in speed, and small in capacity. Therefore, since works such as development of the application program and a test in the embedded system cannot be performed, a new computer system is required to develop the application program adopted in the embedded system.
However, since the embedded system has only necessary functions, an application program required for various embedded systems in one common development environment cannot be developed. Accordingly, in order to develop the application program in the embedded system, each embedded system should have a development environment for developing the application program. Consequently, much cost is incurred, and economical and temporal costs of requiring a knowledge of various systems to a developer, etc. are required.
In general, a process of developing the application program in a host system is performed in the following sequence.
First, the developer prepares the application program in the host system. Second, the host system creates an applicable program which can execute the prepared application program by using a cross-development environment suitable for a target system. Third, the host system transmits the created application program to the target system. Fourth, the transmitted application program is executed in the target system. Fifth, when the application program is tested in the target system, the developed application program is tested by separately performing the test program. Sixth, when an error occurs, the application program is modified in the host system. Seventh, the steps starting from the second step is repeated until the application program is perfectly developed.
Therefore, the process of developing the application program required for the embedded system is performed in a complex manner. Further, when the target system is changed, the cross-development environment should be replaced by an environment suitable for the changed target system and installed and when various kinds of embedded systems are developed, both a development environment and a target system that are suitable for each embedded system should be provided and administrated.
Therefore, it is very difficult to develop various embedded systems at the same time by such a method and as a result, a technology which can find the resultant problem is strongly required.